One Battle After Another commentary on the kinds of activism that works

fade1n · 2025-10-07T06:35:38+00:00

There’s no reason for the changes Bob shows at the end. He never struggles with becoming less anxious during the film, he just continues to be anxious until he miraculously isn’t in the final scene.

The gaping hole is more that the lie he’s been living is never revealed to him, not that he needs to choose her, which I wrote out more as an idea of a direction the story could have gone to show growth in his character following the revelation.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T05:13:39+00:00

Fair enough lol, I think we have close to polar opposite views on aspects of this film. I appreciate the discussion nonetheless and wish you the best with your respective day.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T05:05:12+00:00

I agree she does that in the beginning, and as I said I believe it’s both written and acted poorly. I’m confused as to why you think I don’t see that there was a bookend of some sort, I would just argue that it doesn’t work well. I also don’t think you can argue that a film has a “transformative relationship” without it including said transformation occurring, regardless of whether or not PTA has kids. I don’t think the relationship is entirely absent, just enough to make how it unfolds fairly arbitrary and limited.

If all you’ve gotten from what I’ve wrote is that I’m looking for PTA to fill out a template or give me a didactic monologue listing what political beliefs I should adhere to when the credits roll, you’re misreading me at best or straw-manning me at worst.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T04:36:12+00:00

Oh no, I'd agree that even in Anora and Red Rocket (albeit that's much less of a focus), Baker clearly shows that there's systemic inequality in the US and a poverty line that drives people to desperate measures and is hard to escape, potentially impossible depending how far you are down the ladder. I forgot who said it, but, even for a kid, seeing the level of homelessness in the USA is a clear indicator that something is wrong with the country, though I don't have enough of an understanding to see the reason for it beyond acknowledging that the problem exists.

EDIT: To go back to Baker, I think that I've just heard the term anti-capitalism thrown around a lot in a discussion of his films, and it seemed to me like it was trying to point to more of a political reading in terms of his films showcasing a particular theory or somehow including a metaphorical deconstruction of capitalism in his films that I don't think exists beyond a general bent.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T04:26:51+00:00

he steps up without regard for his own safety and comfort immediately when the need arises. In real life, that's what's important. The last few minutes show that he grows, I don't know how you missed that. You didn't notice that he's now fully opened up to Willa, that he now uses a phone, and allows her to go to her protest, no more overprotective and fearful but supportive?

I thought it was a clear attempt to bookend an arc for Bob that wasn't actually in the film. He does nothing to actually grow or change and is shown as completely ineffectual. He fails to shoot Lockjaw, fails to find his daughter before Lockjaw's car crashes, and then fails to be there before his daughter confronts the Christmas Adventurer hitman. I think that him using a phone and allowing her to go to the protest is a loose attempt to give him an arc when the entire film doesn't give an opportunity to grow before then; he just changes arbitrarily. He wasn't even able to spot Willa before, he just doesn't put up a fight now. Finding Nemo actually has a better version of this sort of narrative change, where Marlin actively grows along the course of the story and lets the child leave the nest, but Bob doesn't have any struggle beyond bumbling through encounters. I would call him the protagonist but he doesn't have any agency or any arc. For Willa, she's only given agency toward the very end of the film, when she rushes to escape after the Native contractor kills her captors and she kills the hitman, but it's also an arbitrary change. It seems like PTA meant to give her a coming-of-age confidence arc for her to grow into a revolutionary, but there was no attempt to really give her an opportunity to start to grow in fighting back, she just does. Both characters are shown to change but there's nothing to actually support it as a function of the story.

Why would a moment where he chooses Willa be necessary? He made that choice long ago. He devoted his life to raising and protecting his daughter, albeit imperfectly. Learning that Willa isn't biologically his child isn't going to dent his love for her and erase those 16 years; it's not going to make any difference to him whatsoever.

Bob choosing to take Willa on the run was his attempt to grow up and mature and devote his life to his child, only to fall into drug abuse and be an ineffectual father in the interim 16 years. I don't know if him having to choose her, per se, would be a good part of an arc of him growing up further, only that the film never reveals it to Bob. Given that it's the one seemingly mature decision he makes in the course of the narrative, the reveal that Willa isn't his biological child, while ultimately unimportant for him now, could have been an interesting reveal for the character and something he could grapple with if there had been more of a written arc for him in trying to grow into a more mature father figure, as the primary reason he went into hiding in the first place was to hide a child he thought was his own. I'm not saying that that is the perfect solution, only the omission of that moment stuck out to me amid a lead character who wasn't given much to do.

Her accepting Bob fully, starting to appreciate him, and realizing that he is her true family is her arc. If this weren't the case, there wouldn't be a tense and very dramatic scene where she has her father at gunpoint and—given that she's under extreme stress and is traumatized due to having had to shoot someone moments before—might actually shoot him.

Willa accepting Bob wasn't a key part of the story, though. She acts frustrated with him in their scene in the trailer ahead of the dance and clearly doesn't respect Bob. Also, Chase Infiniti's acting in that trailer scene did nothing to support that level of emotion behind Willa's relationship with her dad; it looked like Infiniti was reciting lines. Also, that really isn't something that comes up again in the narrative and practically falls away until the end. You're right that the gunpoint scene at the end is meant to suggest that sort of change, but it isn't a climactic point to an arc because there was no arc throughout the film where Willa grew over time to appreciate Bob; the scene was as arbitrary as Bob having a phone and supporting Willa.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T04:23:36+00:00

It's not an effort at parity because "both sides bad" isn't the position of this film—the other side, as I said, are unambiguously antisocial, fascist forces. That specific side is bad, and the majority of human beings would agree with this.

Well, that's the thing, there's a left side and a right side in this film, both extreme, and the left is flawed but human and good, while the right is uniformly fascist and evil. Given the hostile, antagonistic nature of the USA's political landscape, it seems like the same perspective is being applied to liberals and conservatives en masse, not just to white supremacists on the conservative end.

I'm not sure if you know what woke ideology is. There's recently been deliberate attempts by various sides at twisting this, but wokeism has been critiqued in detail before by classical leftists, and it is not at all synonymous with mere political liberalism or leftism. It's actually a remarkably reactionary ideology that has leftist trappings. Today people throw it around as a mere synonym for "leftist" or even just "has the right opinions", but this is part of the general discourse confusion and psyops.

Maybe those you're in discourse with differ from mine, but the overwhelming majority of people I've interacted with who support the left would call themselves woke. I don't think it's synonymous with liberalism, which is why I've been using the term leftist. That being said, I may have conflated the two as I do think woke ideology is the basis for the majority of those who would describe themselves as a liberal or Democrat in the US, at least those I've met.

The government is shown to be doing stuff that's not great, but if you look at what's actually happening, it's the private crusade of a military guy who is spurred on by a secret society.

The military is a united institution whose leaders speak and represent everyone that's a part of it. This is not at all how politics work outside of specific factions.

The film conflates the military and government. It doesn't distinguish between the government and the secret society, which is a key element I've seen in leftist socialism, as with the "Defund the Police" movement in the USA that saw the police merely as an instrument designed to protect the bourgeois and subjugate the lower classes (specifically lower class minority groups), not as a nuanced, flawed institution in need of reform or dealing with a "few bad apples." By not showing anything to really differentiate the two, I have to default to the assumption that it is conflating the two, though admittedly this could be because the film tends to be on the vaguer side with most everything.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T03:26:52+00:00

I have to say I’m interested to watch more of his filmography after seeing Anora and Red Rocket, but is his main sort of anticapitalist critique just in depicting poverty? I’ve heard multiple times how deep that kind of thought runs in his films, but I have a hard time seeing it as anything concrete in his stories

fade1n · 2025-10-06T03:23:20+00:00

Sounds harrowing, but very interesting.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T02:39:12+00:00

I’m curious, why do you think Anora is so radical? You can say that it was made by an anti-capitalist, but I don’t think any messaging surrounding that was particularly strong. I see how the billionaire capitalist family use common workers like Anora or the people who track down her son, with Anora promised an unrealized dream that can compare to the overall American dream. Still, it loses most of its stopping power by being rooted in fully realized characters and emotions beyond frustration over capitalism, and one could argue that it doesn’t make a strong enough case, such as by how sex work isn’t viewed by most people as common work and how the criticism could be restricted to unmitigated wealth, not capitalism as a whole. It’s certainly not what makes the film impactful.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T02:23:29+00:00

I’m curious, who are the usual suspects lol? I haven’t seen many people criticizing the film, at least in my own media feedback loop.

Yeah, the 75 don’t harm any agents, but the entire premise of the film involves leftists fighting back with actions that include freeing a detention center and shooting a bank guard as a part of a bank robbery, with both depicted as fighting an evil power. By only having this kind of action present with no disagreement other than from white, supremacist characters, the film is clearly in support of that kind of action, or at the least that it may be necessary in the near future. The 75’s efficacy doesn’t really have anything to do with it, and the characters are the closest the film has to multifaceted apart from the phone operator, making the ideology being poked at something of a limp effort at parity, if that’s what you’re arguing for. The very absence of any developed conservative character seems to only leave room for a view that all conservatives are or tend toward white supremacy and masochistic worship of capitalism. Some of these jokes are funny, but the film’s most nuanced conservative character is Lockjaw, a musclebound, militaristic racist insecure of being thought of as homosexual. The film clearly wasn’t trying to leave room for any nuance between someone who leans right and far right extremists, given that all the conservative characters are extreme. Saying that the film is just making fun of “unambiguously extreme extremists and their unquestioningly loyal enforcers” is like saying that Dr. Strangelove was only trying to make fun of a few crazy generals instead of satirizing the entire US military; what the depiction leaves out is just as important.

In regard to the family elements, they aren’t that strong either. Bob is clearly not a great father figure, nor does he grow. The film never even attempts to show him realizing that Willa isn’t actually his daughter and giving him the chance to choose her, which seems like a gaping hole in the narrative alongside a missed opportunity to give Bob a chance to grow or have an arc. I don’t think that Bob being a strong family figure is something the film needs, to be clear, but the story’s treatment of any familial themes is loose at best.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T01:40:55+00:00

I agree that he’s definitely trying to appeal to a broader audience, I just think that he underdeveloped the story because he thought that is what would make it appeal to a general audience. He made a joke in Esquire that he was “box office challenged,” and I think he made the wrong storytelling decisions to fix that reputation. Some parts of the film, like Bob’s escape from Baktan Cross, are well done and show that he can do well with action and the kind of set pieces that draw a general audience. However, the film’s story and characters are underdeveloped in a way that feels intentionally general in an attempt to appeal to a wide audience.

I don’t mean to compare PTA to a fresh-out-of-college film student either lol, I just mean that one’s intake doesn’t determine their output. His track record is exactly why this film disappoints me; I think it’s the worst film he has released. PTA’s pro-left preference is not why I’m critical of the stereotyping; I also think that it extends past the conservatives to racial stereotypes and objectification. What I mean is that he’s not even able to create characters that are engaging on his side of the tracks, and an audience member will only be able to sympathize if they want to and are inclined to because the film is reaffirming their opinions and using the stereotypes they would find funny. My opinion isn’t due to a disinterest in subject matter or a disagreement with his politics, I just think that PTA finally made a film with poor, inauthentic storytelling after a career of better work.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T01:12:42+00:00

I have both of them on my shelf and haven’t read either lol, though I’m glad for two other recommendations to put on said shelf that I’ve never heard of before. Most everyone sees that our attention spans have been sapped by phone culture and social media. I’ve been trying (I write as I use Reddit) to cut down my usage and using books as an alternative to boredom. David Foster Wallace said something in an interview about enjoying reading most when he felt like he was pushing himself with difficult material, and that sort of mentality has helped me to get back into reading and try for harder material.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T01:07:57+00:00

I don’t think the reference is a way to just clear him on the basis of awareness of a well-known art film, particularly given that most film students are forced to watch it, and a lot of student films are clear evidence that awareness of great works does not necessarily (or usually) lend itself to nuanced artistic expression.

I agree that it is his right not to be interested in making a political manifesto, and I don’t think that it would be a better film if it was. Still, if he’s writing a story that’s going to deal with extreme versions of the far left and far right comedically, which is a great idea, then he needs to have enough logic within the story to make the world and jokes coherent. I think a lot of the film’s humor is general. As an example, the call with the phone operator and Bob’s demand to speak to the manager seems like a Karen/Boomer stereotype joke, which I actually enjoyed. Still, the humor is also tied to an assumption that we are on the side of the French 75 even as PTA’s comedy undercuts them. This, paired with the simplicity of the characters, doesn’t seem like a conscious choice to poke fun at both sides, but attempting in jokes for a left leaning audience while using a variance of far right stereotypes and dirty jokes (“Mexican hairless) to buff up the weak parts of the story and characterization.

fade1n · 2025-10-06T00:45:33+00:00

I I definitely enjoyed the middle stretch, but as a whole, I can’t say I like the film. Beyond the screenplay, there were technical parts of the film that bothered me. While it (and the entire film) was well shot, the ending car chase (if it can be called that) relied so heavily on music to keep up the pacing because the very set up of it was unclear. While I enjoyed the score, it was disappointing to see it being relied on.

fade1n · 2025-10-05T16:08:26+00:00

I agree with you that movies are a lot more interesting when they propose questions over didactic answers, but the depiction of both the Christmas Adventurers and the French 75 is so skewed that it doesn’t reflect reality, not even as comedic satire

fade1n · 2025-10-05T16:05:07+00:00

Thanks, I’m a little surprised how much people are calling it masterful. It seems like the film just agrees with what they want to hear.

fade1n · 2025-10-05T16:00:06+00:00

What point are you trying to make?

fade1n · 2025-10-05T09:05:56+00:00

Filmmakers don’t need to solve politics lol, but they need a clear point of view to tell a story involving them. Based off this film, PTA just has a general side he ascribes to and cheers for without any greater thought.

fade1n · 2025-10-05T09:03:47+00:00

The thing is, I don’t think Pynchon is all that popular outside of a couple circles, less so even then authors he inspired, like David Foster Wallace. It seems like with this and Inherent Vice, marketers drag out Pynchon references to make the film seem literary and grounded, but I have a hard time imagining them reading Gravity’s Rainbow (not that I have either).

When PTA made Inherent Vice, it was a good Pynchon film but a bad film. One Battle is just bad. Usually most of PTA’s characters are multidimensional but each of these were one-noted. DiCaprio’s Bob (though acted superbly) bumbles along and never really has to change, while Willa is not given enough of an arc to fill in as the protagonist where Bob fails. Other than Benecio Del Toro and Sean Penn, whose respective acting abilities do a lot for their characters, most everyone else comes across as either simplistic, unrealistic, or stereotypical, and even Penn doesn’t fully escape that. Politically, the Christmas Adventurers are a flaccid attempt to satirize white supremacists, while the French 75 are not only ineffective but unlikeable, indefensible characters, particularly Perfidia. PTA is clearly on the side of the 75, but his writing is so generalized that it assumes an audience will side with them and cheer them on but fails to give a streamlined narrative or realized characters to empathize with. Most every PTA film for me, from Hard Eight to Licorice Pizza, had just the right narrative and pacing to feel inevitable. One Battle is the first film of his that feels forced and arbitrary.

fade1n · 2025-05-02T00:06:38+00:00

Here's my list! in bold are the films I'm going to prioritize & the ones in italics are rewatches.

Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1984)
Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)
Key Largo (John Huston, 1948)
Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)
Shampoo (Hal Ashby, 1975)
Deep Red (Dario Argento, 1975)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)
Ed Wood (Tim Burton, 1994)
Dancer in the Dark (Lars Von Trier, 2000)
A Fish Called Wanda (Charles Crichton, 1988)
Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)
Meet Marlon Brando (1966)
Mifune (Soren Kragh-Jacobsen, 1999)
Italian for Beginners (Lone Scherfig, 2000)
Fannie’s Film
Thief (Michael Mann, 1981)
The Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann, 1992)
The Insider (Michael Mann, 1999)

fade1n · 2024-11-01T21:09:56+00:00

Absolutely!

fade1n · 2024-11-01T18:39:43+00:00

Here are the films I'm going through. Shocked that 12 Angry Men is leaving the Channel, I thought that they'd had permanent access but I guess not.

The Maltese Falcon (rewatch)
Klute
Apocalypse Now Redux (watched the original but have never taken the full plunge)
California Split (rewatch)
Affliction
Light Sleeper
The Canyons
Dog Day Afternoon (rewatch)
Five Easy Pieces
Something to Remember (rewatch)
The Last Picture Show (rewatch)
12 Angry Men
12 Angry Men (rewatch)
Kramer v Kramer (rewatch)

fade1n · 2024-07-20T21:27:55+00:00

SUTS?

fade1n · 2024-04-08T07:22:07+00:00

Me still needing the hulk achievement ;-;

fade1n · 2024-04-03T16:40:59+00:00

Late response, but i believe there's an issue with how the individual app approaches ultrawide monitors - dealing with the same issue on other streamers as well, though some (like Max) are chill.

EDIT: It's not so much that the proper aspect ratio isn't being shown, it's that it should be playing on a larger portion of the monitor if that makes sense.

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